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“Many stories with real urgency and momentum grow out of a simple request; someone says to someone else, ‘There's something I want you to do.’” Charles Baxter, author of the short story collection There’s Something I Want You to Do (Pantheon, 2015), delivers a lecture on dramatic structure and how to create urgency and momentum in stories for the Word Works series at Hugo House.
This book trailer for John Darnielle's Universal Harvester, forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux in February, offers a glimpse into the mysterious contents in copies of VHS tapes that set the stage for this suspenseful novel.
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal explores bibliotherapy, “detox” book recommendations to help treat issues like stress, procrastination, and bereavement. The founder of the Book Pharmacy in Berlin suggests that “there are ‘detox classics,’ including epics like The Odyssey, and ‘detox-by-distraction’ bundles of crime, romance, or fantasy.” Write a short story in which a character visits a “book doctor.” What might prompt this sort of treatment? Which books are prescribed, and do they work as a cure? Are there any side effects?
“But ordinary is just what you're used to.” Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale (McClelland and Stewart, 1985) has been adapted into a television series, directed by Mike Barker and Reed Morano. The series is cowritten by Atwood, and stars Alexis Bledel, O. T. Fagbenle, Joseph Fiennes, and Elisabeth Moss.
PEN America announced on Wednesday the finalists for the 2017 PEN Awards. The annual awards are given for books of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and translation published in the previous year. This year PEN America will award nearly $315,000 to writers, including the inaugural $75,000 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, given for a “book of extraordinary originality and lasting influence.”
The finalists are:
PEN/Jean Stein Book Award: A prize of $75,000 given annually to recognize a book-length work in any genre for its originality, merit, and impact.
Known and Strange Things (Random House) by Teju Cole
Olio (Wave Books) by Tyehimba Jess
The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between (Random House), Hisham Matar
Dark Money (Doubleday) by Jane Mayer
The Underground Railroad (Doubleday) by Colson Whitehead
PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction: A prize of $25,000 given annually to an author whose debut work—a first novel or collection of short stories published in the previous year—represents distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise of a second work of literary fiction.
Insurrections (University Press of Kentucky) by Rion Amilcar Scott
We Show What We Have Learned (Lookout Books) by Clare Beams
The Mothers (Riverhead Books) by Brit Bennett
Homegoing (Knopf) by Yaa Gyasi
Hurt People (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) by Cote Smith
PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay: A prize of $10,000 is given annually for a book of essays published in the previous year that exemplifies the dignity and esteem that the essay form imparts to literature.
The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine, and Motherhood (Graywolf Press) by Belle Boggs
Known and Strange Things (Random House) by Teju Cole
A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women: Essays on Art, Sex, and The Mind (Simon & Schuster) by Siri Hustvedt
The Girls in My Town (University of New Mexico Press) by Angela Morales
Becoming Earth (Red Hen Press) by Eva Saulitis
PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction: A prize of $10,000 is given biennially to an author of a distinguished book of general nonfiction published in the previous two years, possessing notable literary merit and critical perspective and illuminating important contemporary issues.
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (Crown) by Matthew Desmond
The Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America (Norton) by Patrick Phillips
Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic (Bloomsbury Press) by Sam Quinones
Children of Paradise: The Struggle for the Soul of Iran (Riverhead Books) by Laura Secor
Bad News: Last Journalists in a Dictatorship (Doubleday), Anjan Sundaram
PEN Open Book Award: A prize of $5,000 is given annually for an exceptional book-length work of literature by an author of color published in the previous year.
The Book of Memory (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) by Petina Gappah
The Big Book of Exit Strategies (Alice James Books) by Jamaal May
What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours (Riverhead Books) by Helen Oyeyemi
Look (Graywolf Press) by Solmaz Sharif
Blackacre (Graywolf Press) by Monica Youn
Visit the website for a complete list of finalists, including those for the PEN Awards in biography, translation, poetry in translation, and literary sports writing. The winners of the 2017 awards will be announced on February 22 in New York City.
Established in 1963, the PEN America Literary Awards have honored hundreds of writers including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Richard Blanco, Katherine Boo, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Cynthia Ozick, Marilynne Robinson, and Claudia Rankine.
Pearson puts its stake in Penguin Random House up for sale; PEN Award finalists; a new browser extension encourages readers to use libraries; and other news.
“For me, books are the things that tell you what you need to do in life and they’re also the things that help you make sense of your life.” Will Schwalbe, author of Books for Living (Knopf, 2016), speaks with PBS NewsHour’s Jeffrey Brown about the importance of reading and the books that have taught him life lessons such as Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train (Riverhead Books, 2015), James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room (Dial Press, 1956), and Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon (Knopf, 1977).
Within some cultures in Africa, Australia, and India, there exist strict rules which regulate the type of language permissible to use with one’s in-laws—for example, married women in Ethiopia who speak the Kambaata language and follow the ballishsha rule are forbidden to use any word that starts with the same syllables as the names of their parents-in-law. Often the solution is to use synonyms, euphemisms, or more generic terms. Write a scene in which two characters must have a conversation while abiding by a law that restricts particular words. Why is this law in place, and how do your characters deal with it? What power dynamics are involved? Are there hidden messages within the dialogue that cause a misunderstanding?
“Sometimes for a kid the shortest distance between two points is not a straight line. And that’s the way that we think in dreams.” In this Blank on Blank animated video of a 1989 interview, Stephen King talks about the many different connections between childhood and his own writing process.
“The earth was running out of resources, global warming was beginning to be recognized as science fact and not science fiction, and if man was to evolve to play a part in things...we'd have to seed life elsewhere—on Mars, to begin with.” At Politics and Prose Bookstore, T. C. Boyle reads from his latest novel, The Terranauts (Ecco, 2016).
